Wound from dog. Help!

[Bbrothers]

Am I able to save this chicken? A dog got a hold of her about five minutes ago just for a second. What should I do?

 

[Aapomp831]

Separate her immediately and clean the wound as gently as you can and apply an antibiotic cream that does NOT contain painkiller. You can put a bandage on it temporarily, but it should have time to air out as it heal. Do this daily and she should recover just fine. It’s very important to keep her separated from the other chickens as they will peck at the wound and cannibalize her. She should be in a small dog crate where her movements can be limited and she can rest and heal - I would make her a wet mash out of her own food, provide clean water with electrolytes, and maybe make her a little scrambled egg for extra protein to aid in the healing process. If you choose to use peroxide, only use it once as it will also kill the good bacteria and damage tissue as the wound heals.

 

[Chicken❤️er]

We had a chicken that had a HUGE bite from a dog (we think), from her shoulder to her saddle area, about 5-6 inches in diameter. Her bite got infected, and we injected Penicillin G into her breast muscle with a .22 gauge syringe needle every other day for 4-5 days, and dressed it with antibiotic ointment. Your case doesn't look super severe, and if my chicken was able to recover from that bite, yours will be okay. I agree with Aapomp831 that you don't really need anything other than antibiotic ointment at the moment. If it gets infected, I would do what we did for my hen. However, I cannot stress enough that isolation is SO important!! Chickens naturally want to weed out the weakest flock member(s) and will try to kill injured chickens to keep predators from being attracted to the group. We had a chicken sneak into the injured chicken's coop as her wound was beginning to heal and pecked it right open again! She survived, but please make sure that no other chickens can get into her space!

 

[Chicken❤️er]

As a side note, in case of infection, I can't remember the dosage of the Pen G, so I would ask someone else in case that it does. I don't think that will happen, though, as long as you put antibiotics on regularly. I'm also not sure if the dosage varies with the size/severity of the wound.

 

[Bbrothers]

Thanks everyone! She is looking good this morning!!